This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and in particular to placement of advertisements for presentation to online system users.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. Presenting advertisements to users of an online system allows an advertiser to gain public attention for products or services and to persuade online system users to take an action regarding the advertiser's products, services, opinions, or causes.
A conventional online system may select and provide multiple advertisements to a user. For example, an online system includes multiple advertisement slots in content presented to a user and presents various advertisements using the advertisement slots. The online system may determine which advertisement slot is used to present an advertisement based on bid amounts associated with advertisements. However, conventional methods for matching advertisements with advertisement slots do not account for different sizes of advertisements or different content of advertisements. For example, in a vertical arrangement of advertisements, placing an advertisement with a small vertical dimension in the highest advertisement slot has less effect on interactions with advertisements presented in other, lower, advertisement slot than placing an advertisement with a larger vertical dimension in the highest advertisement slot. Hence, conventional methods for placing an advertisement in an advertisement slot do not consider effects of advertisement placement on advertisements presented in additional advertisement slots.